In 2013, the High Level Group for the Modernization of Statistical Production and Services (HLG) is sponsoring a project to create a Common Statistical Production Architecture. The aim is to make it easier for each country to combine the components of statistical production, regardless of where the components were developed, based on common standards.

The project has two important strands. The first strand concerns the development of the necessary architecture frameworks, whilst the second is concerned with practical implementation. In April 2013, a Sprint was held to discuss what the architecture would be. The output of that Sprint was CSPA v0.1.

The CSPA Proof of Concept

The Common Statistical Production Architecture (CSPA) Design Sprint was held at Istat in Rome (10 – 14 June). At this Sprint, the design work for the Proof of Concept (PoC) was undertaken. The PoC aims to test the architecture and obtain practical feedback on it. It will experiment with some of the key uses of the architecture. These are:

 CSPA is practical and can be implemented by various organizations in a consistent way

 It is quicker and easier to implement Statistical Services than current approaches

 A Statistical Service can be configured to use across statistical subject domains

The PoC will involve wrapping the five identified candidates as Statistical Services. These are Editrules and BLAISE (Netherlands), GCode and CANCEIS (Canada) and Statistical Coding Service (New Zealand). These Statistical Services will implemented (in various combinations) into three hosting organizations (Istat, Statistics New Zealand and Statistics Sweden).

Organizations involved in the wrapping of one or more of the candidate tools will perform the role of “Service Builders” and hosting organizations will perform the role of “Service Assemblers”.

The Build phase of the Proof of Concept was completed in mid September. The Assemble phase in now being undertaken and will be completed in November.

CSPA v0.8

The latest version of CPSA was released on September 30 2013. This version takes into account:

feedback received on CSPA v0.1

Further development of the architecture at the Design Sprint

Improvements to the architecture after completing the Build phase of the Proof of Concept